Caroline Hale | Contributor
Frozen Minds
Time moves forward
But the uneducated mind stands still.
Years go by
People come and people die
But uneducated minds never will.
Who’s to say where they come from
Or what form they will take next
They have always listened to rich white males
Never those of different races or the opposite sex.
You look in your history books
And you think the ideas have changed
But look past the different years
And the many different names
And you’ll see all these old ideas
Have just been rearranged.
You see, at first African Americans were enslaved
Considered property
But now they’re enslaved
By a cycle of poverty.
Just because people do not understand
That the white man’s whip
Has been replaced by an invisible hand
Does not mean the oppression has ceased to stand.
Just because marriage equality exists on paper
Does not mean that congress will not try to taper
Away every gay person’s right
To live without submission
To appeal to an audience
That pretends to be Christian.
A female may now have a vote in who’s elected
But don’t think that means that her rights are protected
When Congress can take away her right to choose
To accommodate others religious views
It’s not a far cry from when they used to say
That women belong in the kitchen
And have men to obey.
While we have made progress
That does not mean success.
And just because the puppet master changed
From a Robert E. Lee
To a Donald J. Trump,
It does not mean the oppression is yet estranged.
So don’t let them comfort you
Into a false sense of security
Don’t let them convince you that everything is fine
Keep moving equality forward
Even though some minds are not subject to time.